Another BSOD even after formatting, caused by ntoskrnl.exe

Gotcha. It says "no drivers are currently verified"

Also, running in safe mode seems to completely remedy the problems. It is not slow or lagging at all, and the strange beeping stops.

Im getting the same.. But it seems nobody can help :/

Okay, it seems to be some kind of third-party driver issue at the moment, are you able to boot into Windows normally with no problems?

Yes, I can still boot normally into Windows, but everything is very sluggish.

Try these steps and see if it makes any difference - Optimize Windows 7

Well, since it is likely a third-party driver that is the culprit (and I imagine it is, since it ran so well immediately after formatting) I've decided to start over with a clean slate. I've formatted it and installed a fresh Win 7 SP1 (again) and will meticulously go through installing and updating drivers one-by-one and try to nab the problem that way. I also placed an order with Crucial this afternoon; my 6 GB of memory will soon be 16 GB, so I can rule out lack of resources as a potential problem.

Thank you very much for your time, assistance and info, BlueRobot. I definitely will spend some time on your forum, as you folks are a wealth of knowledge (and I'm not very keen on jumping into Win 8 just yet).

Admins can mark this thread as resolved.

Okay, glad your issue seems to be resolved, remember to install all the essential drivers and then when installing programs do it in small groups :)